by Elizabeth Woodworth
May 05, 2013
from
GlobalResearch Website
Nearly 12 years after the event, the official account of 9/11 continues to
be actively studied by academics around the world.
The idea of 9/11 as a false-flag operation to
build support for an aggressive foreign policy in the Middle East is
steadily gaining ground, suggesting that a policy change is overdue.
This essay provides a brief overview of recent academic evidence, high-level
conferences, and media documentaries that raise fresh questions regarding
the official account of 9/11. It then describes the 9/11 Consensus Panel as
an up-to-date source of evidence-based research for any investigation that
may be undertaken to settle 9/11′s unanswered questions.
Finally, this essay argues that mortality from all terror events combined
lags far behind annual mortality from preventable common causes such as
obesity, smoking, and impaired driving. More importantly, all these causes
together will be dwarfed by the mortality from predicted “business as usual”
global warming events - which cry out for a unified emergency response.
Today is the second anniversary of the day the United States announced the
destruction and disposal of Osama bin Laden during a special military
operation.
In spite of this announcement, worldwide skepticism and research continue to
dog the official account of 9/11.
Had the United States Government called an immediate investigation (it did
not form the 9/11 Commission until late 2002) and provided consistent and
transparent proof of its claims against Osama bin Laden and the 19 alleged
hijackers, things might have been different.
In the wake of the officially failed evidence, NGO’s continue to dig into
the disturbing and unanswered questions that haunt this world-changing
event. Year by year, these research bodies have been delving ever more
deeply into new photographic, FOIA, and witness evidence.
Recent high-level conferences in,
-
Kuala Lumpur [1]
-
Bremen, Germany [2]
-
Toronto, Canada [3],
...have raised public awareness of the urgent
need to revisit the watershed event behind the global war on terror.
An issue of the international magazine Nexus, which sold on news-stands
across France in March and April this year, devoted 12 pages to the work of
the 9/11 Consensus Panel (www.consensus911.org)
and its 28 peer-reviewed Consensus Points of evidence against elements of
the official story.[4]
In late 2012, PBS aired one of its most-watched documentaries, “Experts
Speak Out,” in which 40 architects and engineers demonstrate that the
structural collapses of the Twin Towers and WTC 7 could only have been
caused by controlled demolition.[5]
9-11 Explosive Evidence
Experts Speak Out
Indeed many serious investigations have been undertaken by the major media,
including Canada’s flagship
CBC program, The Fifth Estate.[6]
These explorations were summarized in my 2010
essay reporting that eight countries,
-
Britain
-
Canada
-
Denmark
-
France
-
the Netherlands
-
New Zealand
-
Norway
-
Russia,
... have allowed their publicly-owned
broadcasting stations to air the full spectrum of evidence challenging the
truth of the official account of 9/11.[7]
In February, 2010, the American Behavioral Scientist published six articles
introducing the concept of “State Crimes Against Democracy” (SCADS),
including “Beyond
Conspiracy Theory - Patterns of High Crimes in American Government.”
[8]
Why has all this effort to establish the truth about 9/11 persisted for
nearly 12 years?
-
First, because many high officials have
cast doubt on the official story. To name just one, a dismayed
General Wesley Clark reported in a 2007 interview with Amy Goodman
that on September 20, 2001, and again later in November, his former
Pentagon staff told him that the US was going to “take out” seven
Middle East countries in the next five years, beginning with Iraq;
then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia, and Sudan.[9]
-
In carrying out these operations, the
“global war on terror” spawned by 9/11 has maintained an
unprecedented degree of fear and divisiveness in the world;
-
This war has been justified by a
pervasive, shadowy enemy that can only be countered by flawless
surveillance, suspension of civil rights, and unlimited military
spending;
-
This “forever war” has redefined world
relationships (Muslim and Christian) and given the West a new kind
of entitlement to occupy lands that might foster terror against it;
-
It has virtually bankrupted the West
through trillions spent in Afghanistan and Iraq that are roughly
equivalent to the bank bailouts;
-
September 11th and its offspring terror
war have wrecked our confidence in the first principles of
democracy. Ever-reminded that terror lurks all around, we must cower
and surrender freedoms to contain it.
-
Worst of all, preoccupation with terror
has taken our attention off the vital need to address global warming
and planetary survival.
War-on-terror hawks have done quite the
opposite, having manufactured public consent to occupy the very
lands that house the cheap oil that is cooking the planet as it
approaches 400 ppm of atmospheric CO2. [10]
How do we get back to first principles and
return to global, survival-oriented priorities?
The central question is:
“Do we choose to act from what we want our
world to be, or from what we fear it might become?”
Do we design a harmonious world fit for all
humanity, or do we stifle our vision and hopes for peace behind fear,
prisons, martial law, and infinite military spending?
All great periods of history - the golden ages of optimism, learning,
culture and prosperity - have been inspired by the creative, expansive human
imagination. This imagination is inspired by the belief that a civilized
world is possible because we can make it so. It is inspired by a vision of
human beings as a world family whose spirits embrace justice, order, and
decency.
As President John F. Kennedy said in his famous speech of 1963:
“If we cannot end now our differences, at
least we can help make the world safe for diversity. In the final
analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small
planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s
futures. And we are all mortal.” [11]
Because of 9/11, however, our new century has
been dominated by an obsessive fear of Muslim peoples.
This fear, fueled
daily by the Western media, has persuaded America to compromise its
fundamental democratic rights and principles in favor of a “security” that
has not yet become evident.
Thus it is crucial to know whether 9/11 transpired as we have been told -
and for this we need the means to identify the best evidence possible.
The 9/11 Consensus
Panel and its Approach to Evidence
The 9/11 Consensus Panel was formed in May, 2011.
Its purpose and procedures
are briefly outlined below:
-
The media has claimed for a decade that
it is unable to evaluate the technical evidence being presented
against the official story of 9/11.
-
A parallel problem existed in medicine
during the years when there were contradictory, unranked approaches
to evaluating the 22 million articles in the biomedical literature
databases.
-
This problem was greatly reduced by the
introduction of “evidence-based” medicine, which applied formal
rules of evidence in evaluating the clinical literature.
-
Using widely accepted tools such as the
Delphi Method, medicine has now developed hundreds of standard
Consensus Statements to guide physicians in diagnosis and treatment.
-
Similarly, 20 expert members [12]
of the new 9/11 Consensus Panel have now developed Consensus Points
of “best evidence” opposing the official account of 9/11.
-
The Panel Members, who remain blind to
one another throughout the process, provide three rounds of review
and feedback that are refined into 28 Points (thus far) of “best
evidence”.
-
This scientific process has yielded an
unprecedented degree of credibility for points of evidence relating
to 9/11 that can be trusted by the media and the public.
-
The 9/11 Consensus Points provide a
ready source of evidence-based research to any investigation that
may be undertaken by the public, the media, academia, or any other
investigative body or institution.
Conclusion
We have seen that the evidence supporting the official story of 9/11 has
become increasingly open to question. We have also seen that preoccupation
with 9/11 has continued unabated through the ever-present war on terror.
But to keep things in perspective: lives lost to the sum total of terror
events are far fewer than those lost annually to preventable deaths from
obesity, smoking, and impaired driving.[13]
This should translate into the media giving more time to the prevention of
obesity, traffic accidents, and smoking, and less time to preventing terror
events.
That would be fine except that all these things taken together pale by
comparison with the disease and mortality [14] that will ensue if
we continue with “business as usual” in the face of recent evidence that,
“observed [fossil fuel] emissions continue
to track the top end of all scenarios.” [15]
In order to steel ourselves to confront global
warming - the most serious challenge ever faced by civilization - we need to
reframe our priorities.
We need to wage war on our own behavior, and it’s time to gear up, impose
discipline, and win the planet back.
This means taking our declared “war on global warming” to the front page of
every newspaper, to the top of all social media discussions, and to the
Number One item in every town hall meeting on Platform Earth.
Notes
[1] International Conference: “9/11
Revisited - Seeking the Truth,” sponsored by Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Fourth
Prime Minister of Malaysia and President of Perdana Global Peace
Foundation
(http://www.perdana4peace.org/events/conferences/911_revisited/).
[2] “Quo Vadis NATO? - Challenges for Democracy and Law,” University of
Bremen, April 26-28, 2013 (http://ialana.de/files/pdf/veranstaltungen/13-Veranstaltungen/IA%20Bremen%20Programm_englisch%2018_4-1.pdf).
Presenters included: Dr. Hans-Christof Graf von Sponeck, former United
Nations Assistant Secretary General; Prof. Dr. Christopher Weeramantry,
former Vice President of the International Court of Justice; Dr. Dieter
Deiseroth, Judge at the German Federal Administrative Court; Wolfgang
Nescovic, former Judge at the German Federal High Court; Prof. Dr.
Reinhard Merkel, Professor for criminal law and philosophy of law,
University of Hamburg; Dr. Andreas von Bülow, former German Assistant
Secretary of Defense; and Dr. Daniele Ganser, Swiss historian and peace
researcher.
[3] The Toronto Hearings, September 2011, chaired by four international
judges, including Mr. Ferdinando Imposimato, Honorary President of the
Italian Supreme Court (http://torontohearings.org/panelists/). The
Proceedings are available at: http://www.amazon.com/The-9-11-Toronto-Report/dp/1478369205/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1367431792&sr=8-2&keywords=toronto+hearings).
[4] The Consensus Points are at
http://www.consensus911.org/the-911-consensus-points/.
[5] “9/11 Explosive Evidence: Experts Speak Out,” produced by Architects
and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (ae911truth.org) was the most watched and
most shared PBS video nationwide for several weeks, with over a million
viewers. (http://video.cpt12.org/video/2270078138/).
[6]
CBC. The Fifth Estate. “The Unofficial Story”,
November 27, 2009. The Fifth
Estate has won 243 awards, including an Oscar for best documentary,
three international Emmy Awards, and 31 Geminis.
[7] Elizabeth Woodworth, “The Media Response to the Growing Influence of
the 9/11 Truth Movement. Part II: A Survey of Attitude Change,
2009-2010,” Global Research, February 15, 2010 (http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-media-response-to-the-growing-influence-of-the-9-11-truth-movement/17624).
[8] These are listed at http://abs.sagepub.com/content/vol53/issue6. The
print issue is available for $24 from Sage Journals at journals@sagepub.com,
telephone 1-800-818-7243.
[9] “The Plan - According to U.S. General Wesley Clark (Ret.),”
Interview with General Wesley Clark, Amy Goodman, March 2, 2007 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXS3vW47mOE).
For other military leaders who share General Clark’s concern, see
http://patriotsquestion911.com/
[10] Global Carbon Project, “Global Carbon Budget, 2012,” December 12,
2012 (http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbonbudget/12/files/CarbonBudget2012.pdf).
[11] John F. Kennedy. American University Commencement Address, June 10,
1963 (http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/BWC7I4C9QUmLG9J6I8oy8w.aspx).
[12] The Panel Members’ photos and biographies are available at
http://www.consensus911.org/panel-members/.
[13] World Health Organization. “Overweight and obesity are the fifth
leading risk for mortality worldwide, accountable for at least 2.8
million deaths each year.” (http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs311/en/index.html).
CDC Atlanta. “The adverse health effects from cigarette smoking account
for an estimated 443,000 deaths, or nearly one of every five deaths,
each year in the United States.” (http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/health_effects/effects_cig_smoking/).
CDC Atlanta. “In 2010, 10,228 people were killed in alcohol-impaired
driving crashes, accounting for nearly one-third (31%) of all
traffic-related deaths in the United States.” http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impaired-drv_factsheet.html
[14] Climate Institute, “Human Health,” (http://www.climate.org/topics/health.html).
This short summary from 2009 or 2010 estimates the health impacts of
global warming.
[15] Global Carbon Project, “Global Carbon Budget, 2012,” December 12,
2012
(http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbonbudget/12/files/CarbonBudget2012.pdf).